Where do all the women in advertising go? A view from Kathryn Ellis

Research shows that the industry loses up to half of its qualified female talent between education and employment, so what is happening?

We all know that statistics show an underrepresentation of women in the creative departments of advertising agencies, particularly as creative directors. Indeed, IPA research suggests that 89% of creative directors in the UK are men.

However, I was curious to learn that when we look at the gender split of graduates from the creative courses that train people for these roles – such as advertising, art and design higher education courses – it is biased towards women, with 61.7% of graduates female. There are more young women training for roles in creative departments than men, by quite a long way.

Encouraging right? Wrong. My study showed that shockingly we are losing up to 50% of our qualified female talent between education and permanent roles in advertising agency creative departments – these are the 'Lost Girls'.